


You fend for yourself in this world

by SummerStormFlower



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 1987), DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bad Parenting, Break Ins, Brothers, Car rides, F/M, Fighting, Gen, I don’t know this might just be nonsense, Long lost siblings, Road Trips, Separated at Birth, Sort Of, Stealing, Stolen babies, Talking, Treasure Hunting, Triplets, breaking into houses, nothing violent, thieves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-11-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27343078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerStormFlower/pseuds/SummerStormFlower
Summary: Louie Duck was stolen as a baby. He’s raised by Goldie.
Relationships: Louie Duck & "Glittering" Goldie O'Gilt, Scrooge McDuck/"Glittering" Goldie O'Gilt
Comments: 18
Kudos: 149
Collections: Finished111





	You fend for yourself in this world

**Author's Note:**

> I did this just for fun. I didn’t really worry about if it was good or not. So it might not be good.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it though.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

A cry like that could wake the dead, Goldie thought to herself. She hadn’t been sleeping. There was no point when she knew for a fact, she was going to be woke up by heinous screaming. 

“Honestly, how can something so small make such a horrible sound?” Goldie muttered irritably under her breath, as she got out of bed. 

The crib was in her bedroom beside the closet. Her cabin in the woods only had one bedroom, a kitchen, and an ugly bathroom. She could’ve put it in the kitchen. But she wasn’t that heartless. 

With a heavy sigh, she picked up the baby duckling and put him over her shoulder. His screaming was right beside her ear now, but this was the only way he liked being held. Sure enough, as she bounced him gently and patted his back, his cries quieted slowly and eventually died down. 

Goldie waited.

The baby cooed, still very much awake. 

Goldie sighed. “Why can’t you just sleep?”

“Gaga.” 

Goldie rolled her eyes at the response she got. She sat down on her bed, still patting the duckling’s back. 

“How the heck do I sleep train you?” she wondered for not the first time. 

The baby giggled. “Boo!”

“That wasn’t your hungry cry, or your ‘my-diaper-is-dirty-fix-it-slave’ cry,” Goldie said. She took his head off her shoulder, so they could see each other’s face. “So, what do you want? Attention?”

“Gee.”

“Of course. You’re a little brat, you know that?”

“Baba baba ba.”

Goldie sighed for the third time. “Seriously, kid. You.... wait, what’s your name again?”

She checked the tag inside his green blanket.

“Llewelyn,” she said. 

He made a face at her. 

Goldie laughed. “Alright, alright! We won’t use that name. I don’t think I can pronounce it right anyways...” She tapped a finger on her beak thoughtfully. “How about Louie?”

He smiled and cooed up at her. 

“Alright,” Goldie said, “Louie it is.”

“Gaga!”

“Now. Go to sleep.”

“Gaga gaga gaga gaga—“

“No. Sleep.”

“Goo goo ba ba ba ga—“

“No. No. Sleep.”

“Gaga!”

Goldie sighed.  
______________________________________

School. Right, school. That was a thing. That kids did. 

Although Goldie didn’t really see the point of it. She got pulled out of school in eighth grade by her dad to work on the farm. If she’d had any brothers, she probably would’ve stayed in school. But she was the oldest of seven sisters, and her dad was one to make lemonade when life gave him lemons. So he put his girls to work. 

Goldie learned more from living life than she ever did in school. School didn’t teach ya how to get by when you had nothing. It didn’t teach ya how to fend for yourself. Life did. Life taught her how to survive. Everything she knew now? She owed it all to her own experiences. School certainly didn’t teach her how to be the world’s best cunning thief. 

School was useless.

So, she didn’t put Louie in school. She didn’t have the money anyways. 

She taught him herself. 

... It wasn’t easy. 

“Quit running around! Sit down and tell me what two plus two is!”

Little three-year-old Louie was all over the place. Climbing on furniture, knocking things over, breaking things, making messes. All while shouting at the top of his lungs. 

Goldie groaned. 

She did eventually find a solution to this problem. 

“There,” she said with a satisfied smirk, standing up with her hands on her hips. She got some rope and tied the child to his chair. “You won’t be running around now.”

Louie just giggled at her with big bright eyes. This was all a game to him. 

“Now.” Goldie picked up her stick and pointed at the chalkboard. “What’s two plus two?”

“Two plus! Two plus!” Louie laughed, kicking his legs. 

“No,” Goldie said, “What does it equal?”

“Aunt Goldie!”

“No. What’s two plus two?”

“Ham!”

“No! Two plus two equals what?!”

“Ham cheese sandwich!”

“No, I—“ Goldie dragged her hand down her beak, “you know what? Close enough.” This was hopeless. She was throwing in the towel. Screw school. Screw math.

“Yay!” Louie cheered. Then he looked at her with those giant, shiny eyes that tweaked her heartstrings, no matter how she tried to deny it. “Will you make me a ham cheese sandwich, Aunt Goldie?” he asked.

Goldie sighed. “Yeah, yeah, sure kid.”  
______________________________________

She gave the kid a pocketknife when he was five. 

Louie studied it with a frown, then looked at her. “What do I use it for?”

Goldie smirked. “Figure it out.”

So, he did. 

A week later, he was carving figurine animals out of wood like he’d been doing it for years.

After that, Goldie taught him everything she knew. She took him into the woods in their backyard for a couple weeks, and taught him how to shoot a gun, and how to hunt when he was six. She took him on road trips to foreign cities, and taught him how to deceive and manipulate people, and how to pickpocket when he was seven. She taught him how to steal, and how to fend for himself when he was eight. 

The rest he filled in on his own through experience. 

Goldie knew hands-on was the best way to learn. That was why she took him with on all of her adventures and heists. She taught him by involving him. And he absorbed it all like a sponge. 

He was like a reflection of her.

Except even better.

He shot a gun better than her (never missed). He ran and swam faster than her (learned that, of course, by running and swimming for his life). He handled a sword swifter than her (grabbed a sword on one adventure and figured it out from there). He schemed smarter and sharper than her (that was something he was born with).

Oh, and he figured out how to drive all on his own. Goldie was in the back of a truck (that they probably stole) shooting at whoever was chasing them at the time, and she had left the steering wheel unmanned. Louie jumped into the driver’s seat. He was thirteen and it was a manual. He yelled at her after they got away, but he still learned how to drive.

He was her legacy. 

And every night, when they’d lay side by side in some cheap motel, or in their truck, or under the starry sky after some utterly insane adventure—with treasure, obviously—Goldie would stay up until Louie had fallen asleep. And then she would gaze at his peaceful, sleeping face, and her heart would swell. 

She was proud of the kid. And maybe somewhere down the road... dammit, who was she kidding? The second she laid eyes on him as a baby, she loved him like the son she never had.

Or like the son she’d stolen.  
______________________________________

Louie creeped along the walls in the shadows. This house had been extremely difficult to break into, more difficult than the usual. He’d never seen a security system so elaborate. Well it wasn’t really a house. It was more like a mansion, one of those rich peoples’ houses. It was giant. 

He was sure to find some good loot here. 

McDuck Manor. Home of Scrooge McDuck. 

Aunt Goldie’s... complicated love. 

She had told him stories about Scrooge McDuck, the love of her life and her biggest rival. They were... interesting stories.

Anyway.

He was here simply because treasure. Treasure was money and money was great, and it made risking your life worth it. And sometimes treasure was jewels. Which was even better. And from what Aunt Goldie had told him about Scrooge McDuck, he had a lot of treasure. 

Now if he could just find it. 

That was the thing about mansions. It was a lot harder to find loot. 

Louie heard something. He stopped immediately. 

A light suddenly turned on. 

“Crap!” he hissed at himself.

A door opened. 

He looked around in panic. There was a tall vase and a plant. Neither would hide him properly, he was too broad. He was screwed. 

It was all up to luck now.

He hid behind the door, pressing his back against the wall, and hoping the shadows would be enough to hide him from sight. 

Someone walked into the hall. 

A boy in red. A kid just like him. Probably even the same age.

He walked past Louie and didn’t seem to notice him. Louie would’ve sighed in relief, but he forced himself to stay quiet. He’d learned from experience that anything could go wrong at any time. So always be on your guard. 

The boy went into a different room, turning the light on in there. It was a bathroom and it had a mirror in it. 

Louie froze. 

The kid gasped and spun around. “You’re—“

Louie jumped at him and got his hand over his beak as fast as possible. But it was too late. 

“Hugh?”

The boy struggled, but Louie had experience and he was stronger. He maneuvered himself behind the kid, hand still keeping his beak shut tight. He got an arm around the kid’s throat and squeezed. Not enough to hurt him, but enough to get him to shut up.

“Huey? What’s wrong?”

Dammit. 

Someone else came out of what Louie figured was the red kid’s bedroom. It was another kid. A boy in blue. 

The red kid squirmed and kicked and wriggled, making as much noise as he could. 

The boy in blue gasped. “Hey! Let him go!”

Dammit. Heist failed. Louie had to get out of here now. 

The boy in blue lunged at him. 

Louie pushed the red kid to the floor and got a punch on the boy in blue before he could get one on him. The blue boy cried out and staggered backward. 

Louie took off running as fast as he could. 

“Hey!”

“Stop, thief!”

Run. Find a window. Break it. Jump out. Now where was a window, where was a window, where was a window...

There!

Louie jumped.

BANG!

“OW!” Louie fell to the ground, holding his shoulder that was sure to sport a bruise. He stared disbelievingly at the window. “What the hell?”

At that moment, the boys in red and blue caught up to him. 

“Gotcha!”

“Dewey!”

The one in blue jumped on Louie. Louie didn’t even think to fight back before he was pinned to the floor. 

“Ha! That’s what ya get for punching me in the—“ The blue boy suddenly stopped talking. Then he ordered, “Huey, look at his face.”

“What?” the red boy asked, confused. 

Louie had no idea what they were talking about. 

Then the red boy appeared beside the blue boy. The blue boy pushed his hair out of his face. 

And Louie saw it. 

So did they, if their reactions were anything to go off of. 

“He...” the red boy faltered, eyes wide. 

There was an emotion in the blue boy’s expression that couldn’t quite be placed. 

Louie frowned. He’d never been more confused in his life. 

“Why do you guys look like me?”  
______________________________________

Louie would’ve preferred if he’d broken in with ease, found a load of good loot, and snuck out and gone back home as easily as he’d broke in. But hey, getting caught and tied up in a chair in two teenage boys’ room was okay. He’d been in worse situations. And if need be, he could escape anytime. He had a pocketknife on him.

“Are you our lost triplet?” the blue boy—Dewey—asked and shone a flashlight in Louie’s eyes. 

“Ow!”

“Dewey!” the red boy—Huey—berated. “Put the flashlight away. This isn’t an interrogation.”

Dewey pouted, but did as he was told. Then they both sat in front of Louie in their own chairs. 

“Lost triplet?” Louie asked them.

“Yeah.” Huey nodded his head, taking a little book out from under his red hat. 

Louie blinked. He kept a book under his hat? Weird.

He flipped it to a page and turned it around to show Louie. 

Louie squinted. It was a young man... who was a sailor? With three little colour-coded baby ducklings in a big crib. Louie squinted at the green baby.

Yup. That was definitely him. 

“Our brother was stolen as a baby,” Huey explained. “He’s been missing for the last sixteen years.”

“Oh,” Louie said, not really sure of what else to say. 

“Is it you?!?!” Dewey bellowed.

Man, he was loud. 

“Yeah, it’s me,” Louie told him. Aunt Goldie had a couple of photos from when he was baby. And he couldn’t deny the fact that he had the exact same face as these boys. 

Huey and Dewey didn’t say a thing.

...

Louie shifted awkwardly. “Uh...”

Then suddenly, they both had their arms thrown around Louie. 

“W—what are you doing? Are you—hugging? Must we hug?!” Louie cried.

This may not have been the worst situation he’d ever been in, but it was most certainly the weirdest one. 

“Sorry,” Huey said, sniffling. 

Dewey was sniffling too.

What... was... happening?

“Where were you?!” Dewey exclaimed, shaking Louie by the shoulders. “Who stole you?! Did you know about us?! Were you raised by bad guys?! Is that why you were trying to steal from us?!”

“What’s your name?!” Huey asked just as excitedly. “Do you know what your real name is? It’s L—“

“I know what my real name is!” Louie cut him off quickly. “And it’s awful. I don’t use it. Call me Louie.”

Dewey’s eyes sparkled. “We all rhyme!”

Louie sighed. This was turning into an interesting night. 

But then again... there were worse things than finding out you have two brothers. And Louie would be lying if he said that their teary, happy eyes weren’t doing things to his heart.

“Tell us everything about you,” Huey said. 

“...Everything?”

“Everything!”

“...Well... okay.” So Louie did.  
______________________________________

They eventually untied Louie and they ended up outside, sitting around this real cool fountain in the front yard. 

Louie was still wrapping his mind around the whole brother thing. It almost felt unreal. 

But it was kinda nice. Brothers.

“So, Goldie O’Gilt stole and raised you?” Huey asked. 

Louie was surprised. “You know her?”

“Uncle Scrooge told us stories about her.”

Oh, that made sense. “Yeah. Aunt Goldie told me about Scrooge too,” he said. “She didn’t tell me I was his biological family though.”

“Wait,” Dewey said, “You knew you were stolen?”

“Yeah, she told me,” Louie answered. 

Huey and Dewey looked baffled. Louie didn’t think it was that hard to understand. 

“Then...” Huey began with a frown, “why didn’t you try finding out where you came from?”

Louie shrugged. It wasn’t like the thought had never crossed his mind. But... it’d never interested him? He had Aunt Goldie. He had never really needed anyone or anything else, except her.

“I had a life,” he told his brothers, “and I liked it. I liked my life. I didn’t really feel the need to change it.”

“But you were stolen!” Dewey proclaimed. “By a bad guy!”

Louie glared at him. “Aunt Goldie isn’t bad.”

Dewey blinked. 

“I mean, she’s a bitch. But she’s not bad.”

Huey gasped, as if Louie had just committed the worst crime in all of history. “Language!” he shouted. 

Louie arched an eyebrow. “What?”

“You swear? You’re so cool!” exclaimed Dewey, eyes literally lighting up. 

“Dewey! Swearing is not cool!”

Louie resisted the urge to voice his confusion. Aunt Goldie swore in pretty much every second sentence. It wasn’t a big deal.

“Okay, I want some answers from you guys too,” he said instead. 

“Like what?” Huey asked. 

“Like about our mom and dad,” Louie said. 

Huey and Louie both deflated at that. Louie knew right away what that meant. 

“Oh... I’m sorry,” he said gently.

“No. You didn’t know,” said Dewey with a tiny smile. 

It... made his heart do something. Was this what having brothers felt like? 

“So,” hesitated Huey. “...Goldie?”

“She’s not bad,” Louie said again. “She’s cool. I mean, she’s my aunt. So yeah.”

“But... she’s a thief. And she plays dirty!” Huey insisted. 

Louie looked at him, unashamed. “So do I.”

Huey opened his beak, then closed it. 

“I was taught to fend for myself,” Louie explained, laying down on the edge of the fountain to stare up at the stars. “That’s been drilled inside me. And I believe it to be true. You fend for yourself in this world. That means sometimes you gotta steal, cheat, or play dirty.”

Dewey’s head appeared above him. “That’s wrong!”

Louie smirked up at him. “Yeah, and sometimes you hafta do a wrong to make a right.”

Dewey frowned. “What? That’s not how it works.”

Louie shrugged.

“You’re weird,” said Huey. 

Louie laughed. “I think you guys are weird.”

And in that moment, something just clicked between all three of them. They laughed together. 

Then Dewey yawned. 

Louie looked at his watch (yes, he stole it awhile back). “It’s pretty late. Guess I should go home.” He stood up. 

“Wait, you’ll be back, right?” Huey asked. 

Louie looked at him and then at Dewey. His heart swelled.

“Yeah,” he said, thick with emotion. “I’ll be back.” And he meant it.  
______________________________________

Aunt Goldie hit another pothole. She cursed and started grumbling in annoyance to herself. 

Ah, the truck. The good old truck. Their baby had seen better days, but it was still faithful to them. 

Louie sat, slouched in the passenger seat, thinking about how the night had turned out. 

Brothers.

He turned to Aunt Goldie. “Why didn’t you tell me I had brothers?” he asked curiously.

Aunt Goldie made a humming sound. “I,” she began, “actually thought they were your cousins.”

Louie raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Well, that family’s confusing, you gotta admit,” Aunt Goldie said. “I couldn’t remember if Donald was the one who had kids or Della.”

“Della? Who’s Della?”

“That’s your mom.”

“...Oh.” Louie didn’t know what to say to that. Or how to feel about it. 

Then Aunt Goldie cleared her throat. “But uh... sorry. I didn’t tell you about them,” she said, not looking at him.

Louie shrugged. 

It was silent again. But it wasn’t awkward. It was never awkward between them. They’d been together too long for that. 

After a few moments, Louie turned to Aunt Goldie again. “Why did you steal me?” he asked. 

She had told him what she did and how she did it, but she had never told him why she did it. 

Aunt Goldie sighed. He probably got the sighing from her, Louie thought to himself. 

“I wanted a kid.”

Louie blinked in surprise. “You did?”

Aunt Goldie shrugged. He probably got that from her too, he thought. 

“I couldn’t have kids of my own. So I did what I always do. I stole,” she explained. 

Maybe to Huey or Dewey, that would’ve sounded wrong. But to Louie, who was raised by the best cunning thief in the world, it didn’t. He just got it. He understood. 

The world never ever gave you anything if you asked. So you had to take it.

“Guess I’m glad you did,” Louie muttered. 

Aunt Goldie glanced at him, surprise flashing across her face. “You are?” she asked before returning her gaze to the highway. 

Louie leaned his head against her arm, yawning and closing his eyes. “Yeah. I mean, I love you and stuff. So yeah.”

Aunt Goldie glanced at him again. “Even though I stole you?”

Louie shrugged. “Still love you.”

Aunt Goldie sighed. She ruffled his hair. “I love you too, kid.” Then she sighed again. “I messed up your moral compass, you know?”

“Guess so. But I know how to love,” Louie told her. “So, you did a few things right. It was cool to tell Hugh and Dew that I know how to shoot a gun.”

Aunt Goldie laughed. “And a damn good shot too!”

“Damn right.”

It was quiet for a little bit again. 

“You should show them when you go see them again,” Aunt Goldie then said. 

Louie looked up at her. “You’re good if I go back?”

“Wouldn’t be right of me to try and stop you.”

“What about Scrooge?”

“... He’ll have to catch me.”


End file.
